ENGINEERING DEVELOPMENT OF SLURRY BUBBLE COLUMN REACTOR (SBCR) TECHNOLOGY

The major technical objectives of this program are threefold: (1) to develop the design tools and a fundamental understanding of the fluid dynamics of a slurry bubble column reactor to maximize reactor productivity, (2) to develop the mathematical reactor design models and gain an understanding of the hydrodynamic fundamentals under industrially relevant process conditions, and (3) to develop an understanding of the hydrodynamics and their interaction with the chemistries occurring in the bubble column reactor. Successful completion of these objectives will permit more efficient usage of the reactor column and tighter design criteria, increase overall reactor efficiency, and ensure a design that leads to stable reactor behavior when scaling up to large diameter reactors. Washington University's work for the quarter involved the study of the dynamic simulations of bubble columns in three dimensions. Work was also done in dynamic simulations of two-phase transient flow using CFDLIB. Ohio State measured the axial dispersion coefficients of the liquid phase. The steady-state thermal dispersion method was used to obtain the measurements. Iowa State followed the last quarter's work by using CFDLIB to simulate conditions described in the literature, with the objective of validating the simulation result. The group's work also led to a determination of the adequacy of periodic boundary conditions in representing small columns